GRANTS SUMMARY
2017 Awards to iSchool Faculty:
S
2.6 Million
chool of Information Studies faculty won new and incremental grant amounts in calendar year 2017 for their innovative research projects as follows.
NEW AWARDS: Grant title:
Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:
Improving the Structure of Online Breakout Activities Using Pair Programming Techniques 2U $13,851 (Anticipated Award: $13,851) Jeffrey Saltz, associate professor
The research explores the impact of different approaches for student work styles in online breakout groups. It uses data science programming tasks in a controlled experiment to understand how varied approaches create effective student learning and student attitudes. The project also looks at collaborative task completion (distributed pair programming) as compared to informal team collaborations or having students work by themselves. Findings will be useful for how online instructors assign tasks to student breakout groups. Grant title: Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:
Transition Resilience: Navigating Invisible Crises with ICTs National Science Foundation $173,205 (Anticipated Award: $173,205) Bryan Semaan, assistant professor
This research looks at how veterans returning home from war use information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as social and mobile media, to manage invisible crises in transition, such as unexpected or unusual dislocations that challenge ordinary means of solving problems. While technologies can improve peoples’ resilience to disruptions, there presently is a lack of understanding of how ICTs enable resiliency. The project looks at how transitions happen and how ICTs can help improve the designs of technologies, advance training and education for transition and influence policies.
Assistant Professor Bryan Semaan presents research on populations in transition at a veterans conference.
innovatiONS 26
THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
Grant Title:
Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Connectivity Index (EECI) Grantor: Whitman School, Syracuse University (Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation) 2017 Amount: $12,206 (Anticipated Award: $12,206) PI: Alejandro Amerzcua, Whitman School of Management Additional Investigators: Jeffrey Saltz, associate professor, School of Information Studies with Jesse Lecy (Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs); Kira Reed, Whitman School This research studies the multiple dimensions of entrepreneurial ecosystems and their contribution to economic growth. Goals include: 1) Developing an index of entrepreneurial connectivity at the regional level and test it in three metropolitan statistical areas; 2) Exploring the regulatory entrepreneurial ecosystem and identifying configurations of policies that foster and promote entrepreneurial growth regionally; 3) Evaluating whether programs like business incubators, accelerators, and science parks contribute to high-tech industry concentrations and diversification of economic specialization. Grant Title:
Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:
Access to the Gig Economy: Infrastructural Competence and the Participation of Underrepresented Populations National Science Foundation (EAGER grant) $52,299 (Anticipated Award: $52,299) Steven Sawyer, professor
In this project, researchers want to advance understanding of how people from disadvantaged backgrounds pursue work in the “gig economy” (such as contract work in programming and writing) and how they obtain, assemble and organize digital resources to accomplish their jobs. Goals include creating a better understanding of what is needed to make “gig” work successful; identifying particular challenges and needs of workers who come from disadvantaged backgrounds; and developing better data collection on contract or gig workers and the alternative uses of their digital platforms, applications, and devices. The research will contribute to expectations for training and preparing a digitally-enabled workforce of the future.
